If the phrase ‘family-friendly work policy’ makes you cringe with thoughts of well-paid employees skiving off at home while everyone else slogs it out at the salt mines, there are good reasons to rethink your outlook.

The other over-abused buzzword, work-life balance, is not just a section-filler for lifestyle magazines offering largely useless tips such as scenting your bath with lavender oil after a toxic day at the office.

At some stage, your best, long-standing staff will want to have children and it’s not as difficult as it might seem to create a flexible work arrangement that allows them to continue to make your business brilliant while they start a family.

Create a family-friendly culture

It’s no good banging on about pro-family policies if your parent employees get hostile glares from resentful co-workers every time they rush out the door to pick up their kids. Childless employees, or those with grown kids, also need to be in the loop about flexible working arrangements. And it must be clear that workers with children are still fully accountable.

There’s no limit to the range of flexible arrangements that might suit a parent of young children including:

1. Mobile connectivity. Using mobile technology to enable people to work remotely. It can be used for those who split time between home and the office or mobile workers who use their home as an administrative base such as sales reps and account managers. In the UK, more than 7 million workers use this model to help juggle their work and home lives.
2. Working from home. Used in conjunction with mobile, this increasingly popular model relies on trust and mutual benefit, and requires clarity and consistency to work effectively. Equipment policies relating to computers, internet connections and the like need to be outlined as well. People working at home must provide contact details, be available to take phone calls and facilitate communication with the office.
3. Job sharing. Dividing one full-time job into two part-time ones. Employees could split week days or work alternate weeks.
4. Voluntary reduced work-time. An employee reduces working time for a limited period, usually with the right to return to full-time work afterwards.
5. Compressed hours. Full-time employees work longer hours in fewer days. Examples include four long days instead of five, doing a nine-day fortnight, or shortening breaks and leaving earlier.
6. Staggered hours. Flexible start and finish times, without reducing full-time hours
7. Annualised hours. Working time is set by the year, rather than by the week.

Finally, when deciding if an employee is suited to a flexible work arrangement, it’s worth considering:

• Is the employee self-motivated, results-oriented and able to meet deadlines?
• Can the employee work independently?
• Has the employee been successful in their current position?
• Are they a good communicator who takes initiative and is adaptable to change?
• Do they have strong time-management and organisational skills?
• Do they have a home situation conducive to working from home?
• Are they a person who has a strong need to be visible within the organisation?